Category Archives: ideas

The greatest rewards of creativity are having a vision and then turning it into a reality.

This is a process you control completely, and it’s one that comes with tremendous satisfaction and happiness in and of itself.

David Bowie repeatedly warned against doing work for “other people” and stressed the importance of remembering why you felt the personal urge to create in the first place. Bowie didn’t create to be famous; he created to better understand himself and to “do something artistically important.”

Ultimately, the real reward of having your creation be well-received is that it can make it easier for you to continue creating. And when you’re in it for how satisfying the creative process is, then there is no better reward than being able to keep doing what you love.

Avoid the myth of “making it” and create for an audience of one: yourself.

First of all, you should understand that the notion of “making it” is a myth. You might think that “making it” means you can kick back and rest on your laurels, but here’s the thing: success in the form of popularity and fame is fleeting, especially today. Someone can be getting attention one day, and, 24 hours later, everyone will have moved on to the next new thing.

Remember, the reward is in the process, and the only audience you have to worry about is you. When you’re working for an audience of one, there are a number of benefits – all of which can help you hone your creative voice, making it more powerful and, therefore, more likely to gain a big audience.

There are three primary ways of unlocking and embracing your creative side, and they’re all about listening to yourself and what’s around you. More specifically, there are three forms of listening: listening to yourself, listening to your environment and listening to others. All of these steps will allow you to bring more of yourself to your work and make it that much stronger.

There are different ways of listening to yourself, but the first step is to trust yourself and what you have to say. This means being comfortable and confident in what you stand for and not being wishy-washy about your values. If you’re unsure of those values, you can ask yourself some important questions, like what makes you angry, what makes you joyful and excited and what kind of experience you want people to have when they enter your world. If you want to be really precise, you can even write a manifesto!

Being present is another important way of developing your voice. If you’re not present, the profound moments of creative inspiration and the experiences that define a creator’s voice can fly by without your noticing. A lot of people also have the unfortunate habit of always thinking about the future and imagining what they’ll do tomorrow, when all the right pieces are finally in place. You should avoid such thinking. Rather, figure out what you can do with the resources you have now.

It’s also important to create a judgment-free headspace, while simultaneously cultivating solitude. Another way of avoiding being present is to indulge in self-judgment and criticism. You can’t create and criticize at the same time, so drop the judgment altogether and stay focused on the process and listening to what your creative voice has to say. A great way of really listening is to embrace moments of solitude – otherwise known as “just thinking.”

However, simply thinking isn’t so easy when there are numerous distractions vying for your attention at any given moment. So you may need to make a deliberate effort to cultivate solitude. Starting a meditation practice is something a lot of creators do in order to form a deep connection with their creative voice. The author also finds noise-cancelling headphones to be very helpful.

To hear your creative voice, it’s also important to listen to your body, since a healthy body goes hand in hand with a healthy mind.

Think of it this way: Being creative is about being productive, right? And to be as productive as you can possibly be, consideration needs to be given to your overall health and well-being.
One of the best things you can do to boost productivity is to make sure you get enough sleep. But sleep itself can also be productive. For starters, dreams have long been a source of creative inspiration, so starting a practice of writing down your dreams in a journal is bound to be enlightening.

Another popular trick among creatives is to ask an important question right before falling asleep. Start doing this, and you may be surprised how often the answer to your question emerges in your sleep. Even if you don’t quite remember your dream when you wake up, you can jog your memory by spending some time writing down your thoughts anyway. The answer may become clear as you write.

Being creative takes cognitive power, and it’s been proven that a body full of junk food and trans fats will have less cognitive power than one with a healthy diet – especially one that’s high in omega-3s and B vitamins.

Keeping a journal can help here. Make a note of your daily productivity and diet for a week or two. Then note what you were eating on those days when everything clicked.

Finally, there’s exercise. This is another scientifically-proven productivity booster, since exercise creates mitochondria, which give both your muscles and your brain energy. And there’s no better way for an adult to help the body create new brain cells than to get the heart rate going. Plus, exercise is another time to create the sort of solitude that’s perfect for deep, meaningful thinking.

To make your work the best it can be, give critical attention to the environment you’re working in. This isn’t just about putting up some inspirational posters on your wall; it’s about your entire environment, including its sights, sounds and smells.

So let’s start with the physical space around you.
Perhaps you’ve already read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. With some simple decluttering of your physical environment, you’ll benefit from both a cleaner space and a decluttered mind.

How exactly do you declutter? Well, when considering disposing of an item, ask yourself, “Do I love this item? Is it enriching my life somehow?” If you don’t love it, get rid of it. Simple as that. If it doesn’t make you feel good and inspire you, then it’s very likely dragging you and your creativity down.

Spaces that are often wonderful for the psyche are natural surroundings. Something like a forest walk is not only great for solitude and deep thinking; it’s also been shown, in studies of “nature therapy,” to reduce the stress-related hormone cortisol by 12 percent.

Being out in nature is also a great way to remove yourself from noise and the productivity-killing distractions of modern technology. While noise-cancelling headphones can be great for working in public spaces, oftentimes the brain works best with some white noise or a certain type of music.

If you’re trying to write or read, you’ll likely want to stay away from lyric-heavy music and give the brain a break from verbal processing. But if you’re working in a visual medium, like painting or sculpting, music with lyrics might be the perfect accompaniment.

As for technology, many apps and websites are specifically designed to grab your attention and thereby keep you from being productive and creative.

Most social media sites and emails are distractions thereby breaking your concentration and preventing yourself from entering the most productive – and enjoyable – state of being, known as flow. Flow is when you lock in to what you’re doing and time seems to fly by.

Take action to cut distractions and toxic elements from your day-to-day life.
Remember, you control your devices, not the other way around; you can go into the settings and turn off the notifications that pop up and derail your train of thought. You can also unsubscribe from whatever companies are inundating your inbox with emails that add little to no value to your life. In fact, a good step right now might be to unsubscribe yourself from everything and then add yourself back to the small number of blogs, apps and podcasts that do add value to your life. There are services, such as Unroll.Me, that can help you with this.
It’s also wise to simply turn your phone off and put it in another room when you want to get serious work done. And even when you’re not in the middle of a project, scheduling daily “unplug time” will be a great benefit to your creativity. There are also tools – for instance, the apps Focus, RescueTime and even the Facebook News Feed Eradicator plug-in – that can help you avoid the distractions of the internet for extended periods of time.

However, technology isn’t the only thing that can be toxic to your well-being. There may also be certain people that are weighing you down and adding nothing positive to your life. It may be difficult at first, but you’ll eventually be glad to cut ties with people who are actually draining your life of positivity.

A good policy is to treat the elements of your environment like the food you put in your body; cut out the junk and anything that makes you feel bad or insecure about yourself.

Along with cutting off distractions, you should be careful about the seemingly helpful tools that you bring into your environment.

Remember that a good and useful tool is something that can help bring your unique vision to life – not something that makes you less creative by deciding how your photo will look or how your music will sound. If you’re a photographer, a good photo app will make it easier for you to create your desired images rather than make you choose from a series of pre-set options.

There are good habits you can adopt to boost your productivity. One method is to use what’s known as a certainty anchor. This is a ritual that can help bring stability to your day, even if things around you are chaotic. Let’s say you have the ritual of brewing a cup of coffee and putting on your headphones before sitting down to work. This act of coffee and headphones will immediately bring focus to your mind; it signals that it’s time to work.

Another good habit is to find ways of reducing decision fatigue. Here’s an experiment you can do: tomorrow morning, for the first hour of your day, make a note of all the decisions you have to make, from what to wear to what to eat. On average, we make around 300 decisions a day, but that number could be significantly reduced. By decreasing the decisions you have to make, you’ll preserve more cognitive energy for your creativity.

It’s also good to keep in mind that creating good habits is often a gradual process. Let’s say you want to have the daily habit of writing a thousand words. Don’t try to hit that mark on the first day. If you come up short, you might beat yourself up or throw in the towel before you even give yourself a fair chance. So set a series of gradually increasing goals instead, and work yourself up to where you really want to be. For the first week, just write a minimum of one sentence. For the second week, write at least a paragraph every day. On the third week, make it a page, and then keep increasing until you hit your goal of a thousand words per day.

Also, keep in mind that it takes around an hour before a person reaches the state of flow, so schedule accordingly and don’t just give yourself an hour of work time. You could very well be stopping right when the good stuff starts!

The best creative voices are ones that listen to others while remaining true to themselves. It’s important to stay true to your voice and create for an audience of one (yourself), but this doesn’t mean you should cut out all outside voices altogether.

Just as you should cut out the toxic influences in your life, it’s wise to populate your life with good influences. In other words, you want people who provide you with wings to soar, not anchors that weigh you down.

Being part of a community of like-minded individuals is a great way to boost your creativity. These people won’t only provide advice and inspiration; they’ll make you feel as though you’re part of something bigger. They can also act as a safety net, allowing you to feel more comfortable making bold and challenging work. You can help form a strong community with simple acts like creating a monthly dinner club for your like-minded friends and colleagues.

If you have a grand idea for a project you want to get off the ground, it makes sense to have at least one other person with you. In pretty much every creative endeavor, there is some form of collaboration going on, whether it’s the crew that comes together to make a movie, or the editor that helps the novelist. The myth of the “lone creator” is just that – a myth.

So don’t isolate yourself completely in an effort to be a singular creator. Each work of art contains traces of artists who came before. You should embrace influence, as long as it’s positive and inspirational.

However, it’s also important to be deliberate in the influences you consume. If you want to make an Oscar-winning movie, spending a day watching goofy YouTube videos is unlikely to help, whereas taking in quality material before you sit down to create your own is a fine way to get yourself inspired and motivated.

You may also find that it’s best to absorb material that is somewhat different from what you want to create. This will help you maintain a unique and singular creative voice. If you want to start a new blog, maybe don’t use other blogs for inspiration; rather, use the work of, say, your favorite poets to find your own angle.

Well, have you ever came from work or some long trip and noticed that your digital clocks showing the wrong time?

You might think: “Certainly there was no power outage!”. Even if it was, you simply cannot know how long there was no electricity, right?

There is possibility that it was for several days, leading to defrost food and its deterioration. Once the electricity comes back, foods freeze again and you almost do not notice that they were thawed.

It is fact that this can be really dangerous as certain types of foods are at risk of spreading salmonella and other bacteria!

Below we are going to present you a way to find out if and how long your freezer was without electricity!

Now you can find out if you can consume the food or it was too long being in warm.

For this you need:

 a cup

 coin

 water

First pour water into a cup and place it in the freezer. When the water in the cup is frozen, put a coin on top of the frozen water in the cup and then return it to the freezer.

After returning home from holiday, before taking out the food from the freezer, look at where the coin is!

If the coin is still at the top or in the middle of the cup, there was no power failure or power outage was for a short time, so the water was only partly melted.

If the coin is at the bottom of a cup, it means that electricity failure was for a long time, so the water completely dissolved, and the coin sinks all the way to the bottom of the cup. At that point, it is advisable not to consume the foods from the freezer.

Brilliant trick which is supereasy to use. This is particularly useful when you go on longer trips!

*Turn your life in just 10 minutes*
My dad once told me : “You can apply the 10 minutes mantra to turn around your life in a tremendous way.”
I didn’t understand at first. “What’s the big deal in 10 minutes?” I asked.
“There’s indeed a big deal about it. 10 minutes, believe me son, can create a marvellous difference in our life,” my dad offered wisely.
“Elaborate please, dad,”
“I’ll tell you. But first, you’ve to get up tomorrow at 6.00 am.” My dad conditioned. I agreed.
Next day, as I woke up at the agreed time, my dad came to my room.
“What’s the time?”
“6.00 am” I replied.
“Okay, so before you can follow the 10 minutes mantra, you have to “followtheartofbeingawareabouttheclock,”
I was confused. My dad continued, “Look at the clock. It’s 6.00 am. Now within 10 minutes I ask you to do the following – Arrange your bed and your table; drink two glasses of water, wash your face and brush your teeth. But keep looking at your clock while doing these. That’s it”
“Well…Okay,” I said, thinking what could be the catch my dad wanted me to capture.
I began and started doing all he asked. All the time, I kept glancing at the wall clock. Finally after 10 minutes (or 30 seconds earlier to be exact) I had finished it all.
“Well done, boy. You have turned around your life!” My dad praised, patting on my back.
“What?” I was astonished and puzzled, unable to grasp, and asked earnestly “I didn’t get you, dad.”
“Think, son, think!” My dad urged, “Recall your earlier days. How did your day started off?”
I racked my brains and pondered over. Usually, I wake up at 6.00 am. Then, I wander off, yawning lazily and even sleep for some more minutes or sit idly on my chair, my thoughts in thousand directions. And, by the time I finish the above activities, it was already past 7.00 am.
“And today, it’s just 6.10 am” my dad said as if he read my mind.
“Yes!” I exclaimed, starting to understand.
“So what made you do it?” my dad asked.
I thought. What made me do it? Because my dad told me to do? No, no. There was more to it. And then it hit me.
*“ Theartofbeingawareabouttheclock!”* I almost shouted.

“Yes and also ten minutes.” My dad said, smiling at my wonderstruck face.
My dad explained: “By setting your eyes on the clock and thinking about 10 minutes, your mind got *focused* in that span of 10 minutes. It was just like a deadline or a due date. *The “10minutes” deadline kept your mind in the present; in the “NOW ” and prevented you from wandering off.”*
I was impressed. Just a matter of meagre 10 minutes had such a mighty effect! I had completed all those routine activities on time. Now, I felt I have so much time ahead (as compared to 7.00am, it was just 6.10 am!). With so much time saved, I could work on creative and productive activities, instead of loitering around aimlessly. *Time is indeed, the most precious thing on earth.*
A question piqued my curiosity, “Dad, why only 10 minutes. Why can’t we divide our activities into 1 hour slots?”
“Good question,” my dad said, “we can. But Shorter the time, *more productive* you will get. Imagine, if I told you to do those routine activities in 1 hour? Your mind will make your actions slower because you’ll think you have enough time to do it. Even if an activity takes 1 hour, you can segment it into 10 minutes slots.”
“Give an example,” I was eager to know more.
“You can, for instance, segment your workout time,” my dad resumed. “10 minutes- warm-up; 10 minutes- stretching and 10 minutes-yoga,”
“Really amazing, dad; this 10 minutes stuff can make your life on a roll! Instead of long bouts of inactivity, once can benefit from the short bursts of creativity!”
“Yes. The 10 minutes stuff is just an idea. You can also make it 15 minutes or 20 minutes but not longer than that.” My dad paused and continued :
“The 10 minutes mantra can be applied in every aspect of life. A student, a professional, a businessman or anyone can apply this simple but successful technique. Take an example of student. The student can allot 10 minutes time for a topic. After that, he/she can take 2 minutes rest and resume for another ten minutes. He or she can also take time off and read a good book for 10 minutes or allot just 10 minutes for walking. All a student has to do is to be aware of the clock.
Elaborating it further, _we humans have a tendency to keep on delaying small things_. We know we have to pay bills on time, and still we delay it beyond the due dates. We are aware that our bike’s tyres need to get pumped, yet we don’t care to stop by the car-shop we pass every day. We promise ourselves to go to a temple on a particular day, yet we never seem to keep our own promise on time. Why? Because our mind wanders off and deems such things as unimportant. If we vow to take just 10 minutes or 20 minutes of our entire 24 hours, we would never procrastinate and our life will be million times better.”
My dad concluded: “ The 10 minutes, if followed *consistently*, can have a tremendous effect in anyone’s lifestyle. *Procrastination* and *Idleness* will vanish away replaced by *Focus* and *Intensity*. People will tell you they are short of time. No time for the loved ones, no time for pursuing their dreams, no time to eat, no time for their health as if they are the most busiest people on earth! It’s the lamest excuse one can give.
*The 10 minutes mantra can keep us Organized, keep our otherwise disoriented thoughts in check, Balance our life fruitfully and help us to have enough time in our hands. So follow this 10 minutes mantra and see your life turn around at a miraculous pace…..!”*

Recent Posts

Archives

Recent Posts: Vocab Bank Blog

Meaning: Intricately folded, twisted, or coiled (especially of an argument, story, or sentence) extremely complex and difficult to follow. Synonyms: Complicated, complex, involved, elaborate, serpentine, labyrinthine, tortuous, tangled, Byzantine. In Hindi: जटिल Use: When I fly, I prefer a direct flight not one which takes me on a convoluted journey. My head began to hurt as I […]

Recent Posts: Discover Indians

“We reap, what we sow” is an old proverb and the credit goes to the parents of a daughter, who is making India proud while staying abroad by leaving her marks (not footprints) on this earth through her passionate green actions. This is an inspiring story of a 17 years old girl, Arushi Madan who […]

Sarabjit Kaur, 40 years old is a passionate pharmacist in Naushera Dhalla village, Amritsar serving the nation in her unique way. She is a widow and a mother of three. Completing her everyday chores she runs her dispensary with a 60 years old helper without failing treating 30 patients daily. After the Uri attacks the area is […]

With enough practice and a good DIY guide, anyone can ‘assemble’ a computer from new parts. But Jayant Parab has fashioned it from parts salvaged from e-waste, and cut the acrylic body himself. He got the know how of repairing computers from his elder brother, who repairs computers. The 16-year-old, Jayant Parab from Mumbai is comfortable in the […]

Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday inaugurated an all India round the clock helpline — 1906 for LPG leaks. Each oil marketing company used to have a separate helpline for gas leaks. Consumers now have to just dial 1906, to receive prompt help, Mr. Pradhan said. The number – ‘1906’ is a […]